fall again outside my window
by ShinigamiForever
Summary: The reflux is sometimes just as bad. Some things are out of your control. You have to live with them. A Draco/Seamus after war story.


fall again outside my window  
By: ShinigamiForever  
  
  
Seamus likes autumn more than any other season. Outside, the leaves die a little bit, slowly, piece by piece, not quite so much falling as they tumble down, sauntering down with this specific type of grace. Fragmentary grace, but grace nonetheless. So when it's autumn, Seamus presses his cheek against the cold lifeless pane of the window and breathes so close to autumn he can almost taste it. The world is new like a key, and it fits in Seamus's hands like a kiss, impersonal and witty.  
  
Seamus thinks Draco likes autumn too, but not as much as Seamus does, or maybe it's that he loves autumn too much to appreciate it. Draco is like that, and Seamus doesn't mind; there could be worse to live the rest of your untold legacy with. Draco is alright, not great, just fine. Fine like spring and fine like winter, much better than the tossed glory and ecstasy of summer, but just-- fine. Sometimes, Seamus can't help but think he's done something wrong, like maybe he was the wrong one to live, that he's stolen someone's rightful place, and then Seamus gets this weird chill down his spine, the kind of feeling he always gets when he accidentally runs across a wizard photo he hasn't destroyed, and the people all move. Over the years, Seamus reckons he's become like a Muggle, and feeling of people still rearranging themselves when dead spooks him out, although a few measly months ago, none of this would have mattered. If he told this to Draco, though, Draco would just have raised one shoulder, look the other direction, and tell Seamus to stop eating hamburgers, he always knew they put some kind of drug in there. To which Seamus would reply, just as he always does, hey, I like hamburgers! and proceed to tickle Draco until they both collapse on the floor. But, Seamus thinks as he frowns against the window, that's not the point.  
  
  
  
Draco likes autumn, so Seamus is right, but Draco likes autumn the way an old woman loves her age. He's thankful, of course; seeing another autumn means that he at least survived for the few years-months-weeks-days that life has shoved in his face. But autumn carries so much more baggage than just time, and Draco can't help wanting to be the ungrateful host, jerking open the door and shouting, OUT! Then again, he's just being an idiot. Autumn is, after all, only a season, and as much power autumn has over him, he can't possibly command a season to leave. Of course not.  
  
He twitches a little, a shift of his muscles, and he can hear the light breathing of Seamus beside him, curled up in the childish way Seamus does sometimes. Sleeping with Seamus (away, you dirty perverts, dare you poison my mind with such filthy ideas? Ah, Draco sighs to himself, the damage has been done) requires great self control. Draco has always been an active sleeper, active meaning he has a tendency to whirl and smack and hit in his sleep. He figures it's the emotional and physical need to vent stress. He tells Seamus it's because Seamus is an awful bedmate. He always gets whacked over the head for that one. But Draco is an active sleeper, and he always has to keep himself half awake so that he won't wake up to Seamus with a bloody lip and half a earful of curses, magical or otherwise. And he keeps himself awake to make sure he doesn't mistake Seamus's warmth for someone else, someone long cold and dead, tucked tired and drained away in his grave.  
  
  
  
Seamus likes to think of it this way: after all is said and done, he's still alive, and that's the main thing. He hasn't betrayed anybody, he hasn't sacrificed anybody, he hasn't killed. So why, and this is the question that haunts him at night as he listens to Draco's heartbeat, why does it feel like he is the one who is dead?  
  
  
  
It's not my fault. Draco tells himself this as he ducks his head beneath the covers and hides from the world, the shadows which are his judges. It's not my fault. I didn't kill them. I didn't kill him. It's not my fault. But he figures, that's what they all say.  
  
  
  
Seamus is afraid to sleep with the lights off.  
  
  
  
He's stuck on this book called the Chocolate War, and Draco figures Muggles are such fascinating creatures. They seem to have no relation at all to wizards. Who in the wizarding world would spend time writing about chocolates, for heaven's sake, when there was Quidditch to play and spells to be cast? But, he also figures they must do something to pass time, and he wonders whether or not Muggle schools are really as dysfunctional as they sound in the book. Draco is stuck with it, stuck on it, stuck to it, stuck in it, his nose constantly within an inch radius around the book. No matter how strange and different Muggles are, the children are essentially the same, and Draco can't figure out for the life of them why he hated them so much, back then. But Draco reads, and he comes across Archie Costello, and he freezes, the book fluttering from his hand as he reads about Archie's cool and Archie's composure and Archie's ease in life, but most importantly, Archie's blond hair. And then he picks up the book, starting over again, all the while wondering if he was such a mortal terror when he was at school.  
  
  
  
Seamus reads. He doesn't read like Draco does, Draco who devours books and words as if they were handfuls of air. But Seamus likes books, and Draco likes books, and so they trot over to the library and read on weekends. Most of the time, Seamus half expects there to be a restricted section, and for Hermione to be just around the corner, flanked by a moping Ron on one side and a cheerful Harry on the other. He half expects books to jump out at him, for binders to say Hogwarts: A History, for Madame Pince to sniff at him, for Ravenclaw clubs to be gathered around the sofas and chairs. But he sees none of that, only the books and the clouds of moisture slowly building up in his eyes, and in the distance, he can make out what looks like Draco, inhaling the scent of paper all around him.  
  
  
  
If there was ever one thing that Seamus would like to get rid of, it would be the question what if. What ifs drive him up the wall in a way nothing else ever can. What ifs are sneaky little things, creeping in when you don't expect them, and blowing you apart to little bits. What ifs are cold and merciliess. What ifs are endless. And what ifs are his frequent visitors, his constant companion, the shadow that sneaks along his shoes when he walks. At night, he closes his eyes, and the what ifs bombard his eyelids, crying for an exit.   
  
What if things ended happily ever after?  
What if Hogwarts was never destroyed?  
What if You-Know-Who-- oh shit, Voldemort, was never around?  
What if Harry hadn't defeated him?  
What if Harry had defeated him and still lived?  
What if Draco was dead?  
  
But most of all, what if he himself was dead?  
  
He figures, though, in the long run, after the story ends and the heroes are put to rest, he figures that time will come as it is wont to, and wipe away old scars. If time doesn't, death will, anyway.  
  
Eventually.  
  
  
  
Tell me a story, Draco?  
  
A story? Jeez, aren't you too old for this?  
  
Nah, you can never be too old for a story. So tell me one.  
  
I don't have anyway.  
  
Your mum and dad never tell you any?  
  
Mother was not exactly all that into being motherly, and father, well. No comment.  
  
That's kind of sad.  
  
Just kind of.  
  
Make up something, then.  
  
What?  
  
You have an active imagination. Make up something. You know, "Once upon a time-"  
  
I know what a story is, Seamus!   
  
So make up one.  
  
You won't like it.  
  
Worse things have happened.  
  
Your loss. Okay, um, once upon a time, there was a cooky old man with a very long beard-  
  
Like Dumbledore?  
  
Yeah, exactly like Dumbledore. And so, see, this old man made a deal with another old man that when Time ended-  
  
What?  
  
You heard me- stop interuppting. Where was I? Oh yeah, when Time ended, one or the other would have created the perfect boy. So Old Man #1, who looked like Dumbledore, ran to the east and found a river, where there were white glistening stones and green trees everywhere.  
  
Let me guess. He makes the boy out of the stones and trees?  
  
Right on the dot, Seamus, my boy. So yeah, Old Man #1 makes a young boy out of the stones and took the river to make blood and took the night sky for hair and made green leaf eyes.  
  
He kinda looks like Harry.  
  
Does he? Oh. Okay. I guess. Right. So, the second Old Man runs to the west instead, where he encountered sand and jeweled skies and desert flowers. So he took the sand to make the boy and added flowers as the blood and took eyes from the sky. And so they both had too lovely young men.  
  
That's cute. So then what.  
  
Don't you know? Well, Time ended and the two old men met. #1 showed #2 his boy, and #2 proclaimed it beautiful, but with flaws. #2 showed #1 his boy, and #1 proclaimed it beautiful, but with flaws. Since there was no winner, both old men tossed their creations and left them to rot. The end.  
  
That was a sad story, Draco. God.  
  
You didn't ask for a happy one.  
  
For some reason, I keep thinking there's some meaning behind that story.  
  
Ah! Si tu savias.  
  
What?  
  
Never mind.  
  
Seamus turns over in bed, giggling and warm, and he places a kiss on Draco's cheek, much like a girl, batting his eyelashes. I love you, he whispers, curling his body around Draco, and for a moment, Draco is stunned. But he whispers back, I love you too.  
  
And he wonders how true-- or false-- that really was.  
  
  
  
Love, Seamus thinks, is as fickle as anything. Seamus doesn't like introspective thinking; it brings him to places he'd rather not be. But lying awake at night, hearing the echo of Draco's voice saying I love you too, he forces the cobwebs and locks away from the doors in his mind, and there are corners he has forgotten that hold secret little treasures. Seamus thinks about love. He thinks about Draco and about desperation and about Harry. Poor dead Harry.  
  
And thinking about these things, he drifts away into a empty world full of tiny soft places.  
  
  
  
Draco listens to the clock tick away the seconds. He doesn't like time and being reminded of time. He likens it to watching a play with the script in your hands. Each second ticks off another line on the script, and after a while, he will be forced to follow the actions, sleeping, breathing, waking, living. Draco's life has been filled with patterns and repetitions. One of these days, he promises himself that he will break free, let his mind go and stop following the rigid pathways set down for him a long long time ago. But promises, ah! He has not kept nor have people kept promises for ages and ages on end.  
  
Draco turns on his side, away from Seamus. Outside, a leaf drops from a tree, shifting colors from red to orange to gold. He thinks of the story he told to Seamus, of the young boy who looks like Harry, both young and tossed away and forgotten. He looks back at the leaf, the one who is dancing down, and he carefully closed his eyes, trying to wipe away the face of a leaf-eyed boy.  
  
The leaf lands. Draco is already asleep.  
  
He dreams of wilting flowers and Morpheus with pale opal skin and eyes of emerald fire.  
  
  
  
Somewhere, in the darkness, another leaf stirs.   
  
  
  
A/N: I suck. The ending sucks. Wow. That was indeed a pointless fic. Um. *goes back into the shadows where I belong* 


End file.
